. >> reporter: you start the book by talking about a patient whose name is carla. and you come back to her throughout the whole book and you more or less tend book with her. what was it about this particular patient that made you want to do that? >> well, i think she... she... she... she was an emblem to me of everything that goes into making or into facing cancer. she was resilient, she was brilliant, she was inventive, she was... she brought every bit of her resourcefulness to this moment in her life. >> couric: she had leukemia. >> she had leukemia. >> reporter: and a very, very dreadful form of leukemia. >> absolutely. a very dramatic, dreadful form of leukemia and the one other piece of it, of course, is that her history-- which started happening in 2005-- was, of course, linked to sidney farber, the other major character in the book, who eventually-- bit by bit by bit by bit-- finds a cure for a particular form of leukemia, the same kind of leukemia she had. so carla was very reminiscent to me of the connection to so many historic years between a time present